TO TAKE A MORAL STAND

Even if it means antagonizing the newspaper that publishes my columns, there are times when taking a moral stand becomes necessary.

I write about hate speech. About the bully pulpits of animus and injustice that surround us.  I write about pols and trolls and new millennium brown shirts who scapegoat innocent people and paint them with the brush of guilt. Guilt by color. Guilt by race. Guilt by religion. Guilt by association. Guilt according to the news headlines de jour.

Blood libel.  Do you know the term?  It refers to a medieval superstition that accused Jews of drinking the blood of Christian children. Blood libel lead to pogroms and the mass murder of Jews by Christians throughout Europe.  It lead to centuries of anti-Semitism culminating in the Holocaust.  

Hate speech laced with blood libel inflames lynch mobs. It turns unhinged people into frenzied insects who swarm online with words of hate and scorn. Swarming insects feasting on blood libel. 

The blood libel of medieval Jews is now the blood libel of American Muslims. There have been numerous hate crimes committed against Muslim citizens in recent months. Intimidation. Vandalism of homes and places of worship. Beatings. Gunfire. This weekend, a Muslim man was beaten in the parking lot of a local Mosque.

Good citizens, husbands and fathers, people who pay taxes and fulfill their civic duty who happen to be Muslim Americans … all are turned into objects of ridicule and scorn.  Blood libel.  It makes no difference what they do.  Blood libel.  Hate speech is not free speech when innocent people are forced to live in fear, in their homes, in their communities and places of worship.  Blood libel.

Meanwhile, bigots wrap themselves in raptures of pretend patriotism and phony piety … and inflame public opinion with toxic blood libel. Here a letter addressed to the editors on my local newspaper:

-----------------------------------------

To the Editors of the Scripps/USA Today newspaper chain:

If a Neo-Nazi group submitted an anti-Semitic hate screed, would you print it?  If a Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan submitted a racist hate screed, would you print it?

If the answer is “no” to the above questions, then why do you countenance these comments online:

Jim Matthews (See Percy Kepfer letter @ 9:20 AM): “Shouldn't we keep stone age barbaric MoonGod Allah devil worshipers ... from infiltrating modern civilization??”

Jim Matthews (See Gerald James letter @ 9:08 AM): “Stoneage Barbaric devil worship belongs back in their own stoneage caliphate ... totally incompatible with any modern society!!”

William Addeo (see Gerald James letter @ 9:15 AM): “It's time to play Cowboys and muslims.”

William Addeo (see Mohammed Malik column @ 1:40 PM): “You are the enemy Pat Griffis … That's called treason.”

Andrew Treacy (see Anthony Westbury column @ 9:03 AM): “See you all at the next Biker rally” [ note provocation].

William Addeo (see Mohammed Malik column @ 5:56 PM): “Here goes; big mouth, it's time to eat your words … Can a good muslim be a good American? NO, BECAUSE HIS ALLEGIANCE IS TO ALLAH, THE MOON GOD OF ARABIA … What part of this don't you understand?  The answer is simple.  You are one of THEM.  May Jesus Christ, the only God [my bold], bless America.”

Please note the irony (and hypocrisy) of the last comment: “My only God trumps your only God,” and “Freedom for me, but not for thee.”

If your answer is “no” to publishing hate screeds in your newspaper, then your online edition has failed miserably:

William Addeo (see Jack Bergstressor letter @ 1:13 PM): “Hollywood is controlled by Jews … It's all about power and money and control of the masses.”

Note: This comment trades on old shibboleths that equate Jews with power and world domination — straight from the pages of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, the book that inspired Hitler’s persecution of the Jews. What next? Crude jokes about ovens of the Holocaust or lynched bodies hanging from Cottonwood trees? If you disavow hate screeds, why then do you allow anti-Muslim comments to flourish unchecked online? Speaking of  double standards …

There have been numerous reprisals against Muslim citizens in recent months. A Muslim woman profiled by police was strip searched in public. Intimidation. Vandalism of homes and places of worship. Beatings. Gunfire.  This weekend, a Muslim man was beaten at the Fort Pierce Mosque (((but no hate crime according to Sheriff Mascara))).

For Anthony Westbury, the “Patriot Cruise” around the Fort Pierce Mosque is an act of intimidation. He says: “As a community, we need to nip such divisive efforts in the bud before they escalate into hate crimes and cause irreparable damage.” Why then do you countenance hate speech online!

Addeo and Matthews are predatory trolls. They dominate, disrupt, and overwhelm online discussions. They target specific topics and writers for bullying and treat readers with rude ad hominem insults. Please note:

Trolls do not make fools of themselves. When you enable them, they make fools of you.

Recently, I contributed two guest columns on hate speech: (1) “With freedom of speech comes great responsibility” [May 12, 2016], and (2) “Merchants of hate in a moment of crisis” [June 25, 2016].  It is especially galling to devote time and attention on an urgent moral message only to see these efforts undermined by the very same newspaper that hosts bigots and allows its online discussion boards to be used as a medium for hate speech and incitement.  

No audience deserves harangues and verbal abuse. What steps will you take to clean up your cesspool? When will you establish a disciplined standard of civil discourse? With comment moderation? And the removal of abusive trolls? I want answers.

July 3, 2016

Shahada

The myth of Sodom and its destruction is a lesson about there being no forgiveness for the mistreatment of strangers and visitors.  For centuries, preachers and other liars have pretended it was about sex, but it's not and it remains a lesson for our time.

I continue to be disgusted and offended and embarrassed and angry about the response of the locals to the recent Orlando terrorist attack. Hearing  the vicious calumnies leveled at Muslims and a nearby Islamic cultural center, serving American Muslims, I have a hard time separating these subhuman but self-righteous bastards from the people who blow up and shoot up churches and synagogues and clinics:  people who give good people good reason to hate the self-styled Christians and patriots who claim this used to be a great country when they had their way. It's never been a great country because it's always been driven by bigots, slavers, genocidal monsters and murderers of the innocent.

I may check the headlines in the local papers, but the editorial pages, both in print and on-line could have been published in any right wing German newspaper in 1936. It's all hate, and all the time. Last Wednesday's paper included a political cartoon labeling Muslims as murderers and bigots as though these good and gentle Christian soldiers didn't stink of the Beast.

All these bozos seem to be scholars of the Quir'an and are quite convinced that it's all about justifying lies that serve jihad and justify slaughter.  Of course that's true to exactly the same extent that the Greek nonsense tacked on to the Hebrew bible justifies hatred, intolerance and the actions of the Reverend Jim Jones, David "Koresh" and Timothy McVeigh.  Listen to them tell you those weren't "real" Christians but Osama bin Laden was the prototype for all Muslims! Does it even rise to the level of hypocrisy?  Is it just inconsistent to go after, to insult and threaten the guy who turned the shooter in to the FBI because he's a Muslim -- or is it just insanity?

It looks like the local law enforcement doesn't want to provide extra patrols and I read with disgust one motorcyclist advocating driving around and around the mosque revving his engine to annoy and intimidate.  How can it not remind anyone who remembers those days of  Mississippi and Alabama in the 1950's? Does anyone think anyone will be prosecuted for terroristic threats against Muslims?

It's more than hate, it's cowardice, it's fear and panic. It's ignorance and it's everything that makes us the ugliest and meanest of peoples.  I can't separate it from our religious and military boasting, another product of cowardice and ignorance.

It would be tempting to blame it on Southern provincialism and Southern rage and Southern custom, but you know, almost everyone here on Florida's Treasure Coast is from somewhere else: New England, New York, New Jersey.  It's an American thing, it's a Trump thing, it's a stupid, ugly and evil thing and I'm to the point where, despite my loathing of religion in general, I'm about to bind it on my arm, nail it to my doorpost, wear it on my forehead as frontlets between my eyes: لا إله إلا الله محمد رسول الله  you miserable bastards. Get the fuck out of my country.

Safety First

Like a bird on the wire, like a drunk in a midnight choir. I have tried in my way to be free.

-Leonard Cohen-


Here's a nightmare for you: Sal Paradise and Dean Moriarty seeking America in a self-driving, air conditioned, Japanese safety capsule with no windows but with blue tooth and WiFi.  

Self driving cars: the urge to produce them mystifies me since being able to drive is an essential and precious freedom in my book. for over a hundred years it's been what America was about and I wonder what has done as much, rightly or wrongly - for personal liberty in America as the automobile.

I understand that the "millennials" are now the center of all marketing targets.  I understand the "millennials" aren't quite as keen on the fading American car culture that defined my own youth. They seem to prefer staring at those little black boxes and perhaps having a self-driving vehicle will allow their undivided attention to games and TV and playlists while shopping and texting their 19,642 Facebook Friends -- who knows?  

But robot cars are being touted as an important safety measure and safety in our country is seen as paramount, with all other rights and privileges pertaining to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness being secondary to the needs of absolute safety and the demands of an entertainment addiction.

You'll gather that  I'm mostly against these things, and I am, but not only for the threat of  restrictive "car control" regulations but for the firm belief that no machine can possibly predict the actions of another driver nor read the pavement to predict adhesion nor even distinguish a paper bag in the road from a cement block -- or someone's cat.   That opinion seems not to be so technophobic after May 7th when a Florida Tesla driver, cruising along on "autopilot" watching Harry Potter, found his Tesla not quite so good at discriminating between an 18 wheeler and a cloud and refrained from taking evasive action or hitting the brakes and putting the driver into another and safer vehicle: his coffin.

But it's "potentially life saving" and as anyone knows, even if one life is saved, all is justified.  Safety First, as everyone knows.

Now autopilots on airplanes are dependable and probably safer than requiring a pilot's concentration of great lengths of time. My former yacht had one and it worked amazingly well but the law and common sense demand that someone be at the helm watching out and able to take over command with the push of a big, red, button.  Cars?  Not so much as the popular phrase suggests.  Sure, pass a law so you can give out a ticket after a couple of carloads worth of people get killed. Great idea.

Of course highway safety has increased steadily, decade after decade and hasn't been much affected by speed limits or stop light cameras or $3000 speeding fines. So why are we ever more demanding of safety gadgets that pretend to be better than a trained and practiced human?   Is the day getting closer when we spend our lives sealed in a safety capsule, experiencing the real world only second hand via virtual reality coming soon?  Probably not. Nothing in history is linear, but that general trend makes reality so much more precious. Exercizing a skill, relying on it for your own safety, Being part of the enviornment first hand is worth it, but everywhere I see black boxes in the hands of people sitting in black boxes with blacked out windows and not looking out of them as they go about their connected days, oblivious.

So maybe this is a good morning to take the Schwinn out for a ride, while I still can ride it without body armor, back up cameras and padded pavement.

Neither a Borrower nor a Lender Be

"I'm self-funding my own campaign."

— Donald Trump on Monday, February 1st, 2016 in a campaign rally in Iowa

I would promise to strangle the next person who told me Trump is the most trustworthy of candidates because "he financed his own campaign" but really, at my age I lack the stamina.  So many necks (red and otherwise) and so little time.

Besides the shaky argument that he'd be honest by being beholden to no contributor, it's not entirely true since not only does he have donors, but much of that self-funding consists of loans by him to his campaign. Whether or not he intends to use donations to repay himself is unclear either from his record or his promises.   But of course he's hardly refraining from asking for money and apparently in mockery of his accusations of dishonesty against his opponent, he's mocking the law too by soliciting donations from officials of foreign governments on their official e-mail accounts.  Investigation?  Sure maybe 75 years from now when they're done with investigating Clinton for treason while ignoring a Republican Secretary of State for doing the same thing.

Has any candidate done more for ratings than Dishonest Donald? We'll probably hear little about this scandal. (Yeah, yeah, Bloomberg is the Liberal press.) Don't look for even the most "Liberal" of the Liberal press to inconvenience that goose in the laying of it's golden eggs.

Energizing the Base

Makes me feel like I'm in grade school again and it's supposed to. Sitting there, hand in the air knowing the expected answer and hoping to be the first to yell out "GUNS!"

Like so many of these Facebook posts, it's meant for the converted and not to convince anyone outside the tribe  -- and it doesn't.  To the convinced, it will slip by the normal reaction of skeptical analysis and will immediately toggle the "boy, those gun nuts are just plain stupid" program. and the "if he argues he must be one of them" subroutine. Guns!  Just guns and only guns! is the Pavlovian response, There's only one cause, only one solution in this simplest of all possible worlds.

People are simple and want only simple answers. That's why we support demagogues. That's why we make conclusions from inconclusive data.  We have about twice the automobile fatality rate of the UK and Australia, can we assume the same causes?  Do we dare to add other countries to the same guns question or have we Gerrymandered the short list?  Are we selecting the data points to fit on the theoretical curve? Where do we fit on a universal danger list?

To those outside that bubble the first reaction might be "Those countries have a different health care system and they don't dump the mentally ill on the streets."  It might also be true that there are fewer members of a large impoverished, addicted. angry and hopeless class trapped inextricably by circumstances, prejudices and a lack of social services, housing, education, opportunity for improvement, medical care and adequate diet: so much fodder for the many hate merchants we have. And of course no one is defining mental illness here.   Even the less perceptive from outside the circle might suspect the band is playing another false equivalence Foxtrot.

Does restricting the view to massacres only, that tiny proportion of the firearms assault spectrum give a biased view? Is the apparent trend real, is it a short aberration on a line with a different long term trend?   Is it the same kind of sophistry as letting the deeds of one man be the paradigm, the "typical." It comes right out of the manipulator's playbook.

Of course those countries have had massacres. We're just inclined to think they don't because the teacher is always right. The UK has had a great many of them: Bloody shootings in Northern Ireland, Sinn Féin bombings in London. Spain, France and other countries in Europe have had massacres in train stations and public areas for years. Algerians, Basque Separatists,  Baader-Meinhoff in Germany and the Red Brigade of Italy; ISIS, al Qaeda, etc.  Mentally ill pilots crash planes, crazy people use truck bombs and poison gas and set fires,shoot up newspaper offices, theaters, night clubs and hotels. It doesn't register with us as being the same thing even though the innocent victims are the same type and degree of being dead.

Worst ever! worst ever! is what you hear and you're not supposed to factor in the fact that the previous worst ever and comparable school shooting was 90 years ago and the century's experience seems more sporadic and episodic than progressive. Everything is getting worse, say people like Trump and the Tea Party con men  and manipulators of all kinds and the respective bases have never been more energized. No one will bother to notice that murders and armed assaults have steadily declined for decades despite the stated erosion of gun laws.

If it comes from our crowd we don't question, we just glad hand, high five and fist bump just the way the Trump Chumps do every time some silly giggling camp follower excuses his latest gaffe.  After all, part of being a cult is to alienate the outsider and prevent him from being heard. It works.

So what if you have constructive ideas, will it ever be heard through the untruths and distortions; red herrings and outright lies?  Over the grins and back slapping? I think not. Semi-automatic will always mean machine gun and they always spray super high velocity big-bore bullets that actually aren't.  The number of murders will always be off by a factor of two. The decline in the number of guns per household will always be explained as bad or irrelevant and the lack of correlation between regulations and effects will always be shouted down. It's always getting worse, it's a disaster, a trainwreck and only Donald or Bernie or Hillary of Ted can save us. Hey teacher - pick me!

And then there's the unsupported assumption that only guns are suitable in a world where most massacres are done with bombs, from Haymarket Square to the Anarchist bombs of the early 20th, to Oklahoma City to New York and Washington DC to Boston. The single cause fallacy supporting the single solution fallacy.

I'm tempted to ask whether gun control advocates are just Onanists or are they really interested in winning over an opposition who doesn't trust any of their reassurances because of all the lies, distortions, half truths, unsupported assertions and hyperbole?

Just Island universes are we, or non-intersecting circles in some vast Venn diagram. No one to tell us what we don't want to hear that we can't dismiss with a snark and a bark and some fudged figures as the world ends, not with a bang but a giggle.  Call on me teacher!

Springtime For Trump

Shocking to wake up and find you've lost enough to buy a nice house because some Brit Brats with nose rings and face tattoos want to return to chauvinist nationalism and don't understand or like foreigners or the way the modern world economy works.

Everyone suddenly notices that Herr Drumpf might just defy reason and find himself the American Führer. Drumpf who seemed yesterday, taking time off from campaigning to do some shifty business,  to think running away from the EU means Scottish independence, which it doesn't, or that the
British can now have their own currency, which they always have had, and can protect their borders which they already do. I'm betting that most fifth graders know that.

Everyone has begun to reminisce about how the disaffected Weimar Republic Germans who felt left out and cheated and robbed, turned to the scapegoats offered by the Nazis and decided to make Germany Great again. I'm starting to be very aware how possible it is that we'll have a president who wants to default on Treasury bonds to "improve" the economy and make American hate again. I see wealthy old men, with their yachts and Ferraris wearing Trump hats and I see tens of millions of less wealthy ones losing their pensions and savings because Trump has the economic expertise of a garden slug, his campaign almost bankrupt like many of his businesses. I see him sitting in the White House screwing the American people as he did with his bogus "university" I see him making America White Again, deporting millions and destroying lives and families and ruining the lives of children while peddling real estate and cheap steaks like the huckster he is.

The UK may get a chance to change their minds.  The US won't if Trump is elected.  Absent a revolution or a military coup we'll have to ride that train straight down to hell. This is a man, we're told by people close to him, reads Hitler's speeches and admires Goebbels' technique of repeating a lie until it becomes true.

Crooked Trump.  Say it loud. Say it again.

Islamophobia in my Backyard

The shooter who staged the Orlando massacre lived less than 30 minutes from my home. Nearby lives another man, the one who knew the shooter and performed his civic duty years ago when he notified the FBI of potentially erratic behavior. Yesterday, his story made national headlines: 

I reported Omar Mateen to the FBI

(Washington Post).

Friend Who Told FBI About Orlando Shooter Omar Mateen Saw a Red Flag

(NBC News).

Friend of Orlando shooter tipped FBI in 2014

(USA Today).

His name is Mohammed Malik. We exchanged friendship on FaceBook over a year ago. We share a mutual interest in human rights and cultural exchange within our community.  Since then, we share email messages and an occasional lunch together.  

We met more than a year ago through a online forum run by our local newspaper.  Over another writer, another guest column, another impassioned plea for tolerance. Trolls assailed the writer and his Op-Ed viciously. I spoke up in his defense; but no one else.  Mohammed thanked me. It was the start of our friendship.  

Today, another column in our local newspaper, again written by my friend. And again the trolls are ganging up. Vicious stuff. It never ends.

I’ll be busy for the next few days … again speaking on behalf of my friend.  

Keep Calm and. . .

No, really, just keep calm. . . please.

"The worst thing about America is GUNS!"  I'm told, and if I disagree, I've been brainwashed by an organization I don't belong to or listen to and have contempt for.  Why? because zealots argue by the numbers the way a salesman is trained: with lists of objections and standard responses but without the yelling and insulting that make it hard to sell insurance or swamp land. When it comes to guns, food, cars, economics, taxation, immigration, religion and a few other subjects dear to the brainwashing trade, it's mostly about avoiding the facts to avoid refutation. "Don't ask questions, just look at the bogeyman!"

 One preempts the calm, rational approach by attacking first. Nebulous and ill -- defined attacks are best for this purpose.  Sure, guns frighten the hell out of some people and everyone has the right to their fears, but other things may be more dangerous. That's why when I suggest banning the most dangerous feature of any gun, I get "no, only assault weapons, read the script or shut up,"  If you want to see a working definition of "conniption" just keep calm and stick to the facts.

Sign here to send a petition to "Help stop the use of bee-toxic pesticides!"  Could we keep a bit more calm because there's no particular evidence that pesticides are causing or contributing to this apparently widespread phenomenon of  hive collapse syndrome, and even if the EPA has the power to ban or eliminate such things if they do exist, it doesn't mean there's any scientific consensus on the etiology of this disease which may not actually be new and appears on more than one continent. There's plenty of activist consensus, but as with the fanatical but unsupportable assertions about Autism spectrum syndrome and vaccines,  it's based on rumor and conjecture and hysteria, just as the previous notion that it was all about cell phones because after all, Post Hoc means Propter Hoc. Certain people prone to see real and imaginary ills to be the product of evil corporations (aren't they all evil?) won't question it though, and if you don't, well you're brainwashed. Science?  Just keep banning until the problem goes away.

"I don't need any facts, I just know" said one Solon after I asked him whether a proposed measure had a record of previous successes.  I'm afraid that response is too commonplace when certain, activist-dominated subjects are involved. But what do I know?  I've been brainwashed by the facts and made a fool of by calm reflection. The 'solution' has been an abject failure more than once, but he just knows it will work which is a form of the argument from ignorance.  After all it's a gun control proposal and so it will, ipso facto,  control guns, just as all those "Crime Bills" we were urged to support in the 70's and 80's that made things worse. Or those bills to "untie the hands" of the police that also made things so much worse and the Drug bills that filled our jails with harmless and ordinary people, destroying the lives and families we were supposed to be protecting.  As old Daniel Webster said:

 "the strong conviction that something must be done is the parent of many a bad measure." 

The end may justify the means sometimes, but the urgency and fear don't justify all proposals. None the less, if your plan fails, you can always blame it on the appropriate bogeyman to escape the inevitable "told you so."

I'm looking at a list of statistical rankings of fatality risks in our country.  It's in response to the "worst thing" assertion.  Of course as with all such things you have to define terms and I'm taking the liberty of defining worst as the most dangerous, the most likely to kill you, and of course Heart disease, stroke and cancer are by far the leading causes of death. Odds are it's curtains for you and me sooner or later, I'm afraid.  It's full of many  interesting observations including that bicycles are enormously more dangerous than motorcycles in terms of how many people are killed on them.


 Assault by firearm?  It's number ten at 1 in 300 and that's terrible at first glance or at second glance, but then as with motorcycle accidents at 1 in 802  and death by drowning and immersion at 1 in 1073, those are averages for the entire population and if you don't go near the water and don't ride a motorcycle these risks don't apply, just as if you don't live in certain neighborhoods and don't get involved in gangs or drugs, your odds of firearm assault may vary - enormously.

Cause for some thought here about apparent risk and actual risk?  Nah. We just know we're right and reflection is weakness and if the group advocates something but I advocate something stronger, I must be a dupe, a stooge of the standard bogeyman. Pick one from the menu.

The overall likelihood of a fatal drug overdose is almost on a par with fatal shooting, but of course neither you nor I is likely to do them, (although I can't be too sure about you) Averages can be hugely misleading and they certainly are when used to frighten people into grasping at straws or laws.  So if I say that chances are something other than guns is gonna gitcha even if you do watch out, it's not because there's no danger from firearms and killers, but it's not the worst and I can prove it. There may be something worse in other senses than guns - say like injustice or the lack of access to medical care or higher education voting rights or legal council or even safe water, for our suburban Detroit friends.

But there is no anti-motorcycle advocacy group. The Motorcycle Haters are far less organized than the Monsanto Haters and of course since hardly anyone is an organic chemist or geneticist, has a degree in biology or agriculture, it's a perfect windmill for the bee saving Quixotes of America to tilt at. Bike haters?  They're around but not nearly so outspoken.  I think they're afraid of us.

As with all things relative to our fear and anger industry, the Worst Thing, as Orwell told us in 1984 is very personal. The worst thing may just be your own fear. It may be something you haven't thought about while being terrified of something else because what you fear is mostly about partisanship and manipulation. It's about preventing calm and objectivity.  It's all about what group has washed your cerebral cortex. It's less about the principles than about the principals. 

Orlando Post Mortem: Merchants of Hate in a Moment of Crisis

(With minor changes and revisions, the following post will be syndicated

later this week in the USA Today family of newspapers.

An acknowledgement to Shaw for links to

rightwing evangelical hate screeds)

First reports: Shots fired in an Orlando nightclub. Three hours later, a swat team storms the building. By morning, we learn the scope of the carnage: 49 dead, 53 wounded, and 26 in critical condition. During the siege, the shooter dials 911 and claims allegiance to ISIS. Fragmentary soundbites trigger waves of suspicion and fear.

“This is not the Islam I know,” my Muslim friends and neighbors assure me. An editorial in TcPalm reads: “This is not who we are.”

Our local Islamic community responds. “It violates the teachings of Islam,” says Dr. Taher Husainy, a prominent neurologist and Muslim spokesman in my community. This is not the Islam he knows.

Victor Ghalib Begg, a guest columnist of this newspaper, quotes the Quran: “Whoever kills a person, it is as though he has killed all humankind.” This is not the Islam he knows.

In Dallastown, Pennsylvania, Rev. Christopher Rodkey of St. Paul's United Church of Christ posts a sign: ”Wishing a blessed Ramadan to our Muslim neighbors.” A crank caller slams Islam. Rodkey traces the call to a Republican National Convention delegate pledged to Donald Trump.

Within days, new details emerge. Daniel Gilroy, a former Florida police officer who knew the shooter, describes him as unstable and unhinged.  According to Gilroy, the shooter abhors gays, blacks, Jews, and women — slurs often riddled with threats of violence.

Sitora Yusufiy, the shooter’s first wife, recalls an abusive former husband. He beat her, confiscated her paychecks, and kept her confined as a virtual prisoner. She flees the marriage after four months.

In 2013 and 2014, the FBI investigates the shooter for possible ties to Muslim terrorist groups. Insufficient evidence; case closed.

On Monday, we learn the shooter lived a double life. He frequents a gay nightclub on a regular basis. Patrons recall an exchange of text messages on a gay networking site.

“Why, if he is gay, would he do this?" asks the father of the shooter. Perhaps this term applies: Reaction formation. It is the public mask of a disturbed person disguising an inner torment. It explains why a closet homosexual may present himself as an angry homophobe. New details change our portrait of the gunman.

But not according to Donald Trump who wants us to be very afraid. “I said this was going to happen,” he boasts with chest-thumping bravado. Muslims murder gays, and the president is a terrorist sympathizer. His cheap shots misfire. The shooter is not an immigrant but a native-born New Yorker.

Pious words segue to customary pander. We hear sleazy soundbites of derogation and scorn from Twitter to television. The latest Frankenstein turns audiences into angry villagers brandishing pitchforks.

On FaceBook one day later, Assistant State Attorney Kenneth Lewis describes the City of Orlando as “a melting pot of third world miscreants and ghetto thugs.” He is immediately suspended.

We hear reckless rhetoric from the pulpit. Evangelist James Dobson claims transgender people who use public restrooms should be shot.

After hosting Ted Cruz, Mike Huckabee, and Bobby Jindal at a religious liberties conference last year, Pastor Kevin Swanson called for gays to be sentenced to death if they refuse to repent.

Senior Pastor Robert Gallaty says: “Go to Leviticus 20:13. God gives us the punishment for engaging in these sins … They must be put to death.”

“This is not the Christianity I know,” says a pastor in my circle of friends. This is not the America I know, nor the country I want for my children, grandchildren and future generations. 

For a nation that prides itself as the melting pot of the world, hate speech turns us into hypocrites. We demonize and dehumanize our differences. We scapegoat and persecute the innocent along with the guilty.

We fail to condemn the bully pulpits of animus and injustice among us. Where is our moral compass? It is time to restore the values of honesty and decency in our public life and hold everyone accountable. Enough is enough!

And the home of the Brave

I'm sure the mourning and weeping and candle lighting will go on for a while and I'm sure the finger pointing, panic mongering and political accusations of guilt will continue apace.

I have to look at how France has reacted after their own, much larger attacks in recent years.  It's been very different I think. From over here, it looks like expressions of solidarity and refusal to be afraid typify the nation we like to joke about and accuse of cowardice.  Paris has just lit up the Eiffel Tower as a token of solidarity with the usually supercilious and superior USA.  Thank you and Vive La France.

We on the other hand have been spending our time both trying to stress that Orlando was a Jihadi attack and furiously denying it. Look not to the murderer's hand, say some. It's all about the guns. It's all because Obama won't say Islamic terrorism, say others. It's only because he used an "assault rifle" said one guy before I blocked him on Facebook. He would not admit that the Glock 17 pistol he carried actually was "military grade" but the rifle wasn't. Handguns are irrelevant apparently, if you're rabid about "assault rifles" but don't really know what that means. Many think they are legal machine guns, others thing the same bullet is more deadly because the rifle has a pistol grip, but neither panic nor politics make for truth or support logic. The first thing I saw this morning was an admonishment that we don't have a constitutional right to shoot 100 people at once.  Thanks for reminding me that murder is illegal but I'd like to see a gun that can do that. We don't have a constitutional right to blow up buildings or set fires in nightclubs either. Meaningless non-sequitur designed to argue for the gun control policy that failed so miserably in this case. Be afraid! We're all in danger!

Where is the "let's stand together" rhetoric? No, it's more like "you can't go out any more" cowardice being hyped up by anti-gun panic brokers and when coupled with "they're going to take away our guns" panic on the other side, we're as funny as a Punch and Judy show to people that wish us harm and destruction.  We're simply not the home of the brave we once were and apparently Europeans still are. From a gun-free America to driverless safety cars to the idea of a locked down walled country I feel surrounded by mewling, trembling, pants-pissing cowards.  None of this bodes well for us remaining as the home of the free either.